Most wood trees have solid tree trunks which can grow to have large diameters, so they can easily be cut and sawn into lumber boards. These boards, together with other manufactured wood boards, are used in construction and other areas. Plywood is manufactured by continuously peeling along the circumference of a wood log, thereby producing wood sheets or veneers which can be cut and assembled into a "sandwich" with glue between the sheets. Due to technical difficulties, the logs have to be abandoned when the diameter has decreased to about 4 inches.
Bamboo trees are normally not suitable for the production of lumber boards or plywoods. Since bamboo tree trunks are hollow, they cannot be made into lumber boards. In addition, bamboo tree trunks have relatively small diameters even when the trees are fully mature, and so the standard process of manufacturing plywood cannot be applied to bamboo logs with practicality. As a result, no bamboo boards have been commercially available, despite the fact that there are certain advantages in the use of bamboos.
Bamboo fibers are stiffer and stronger than most wood fibers, so a successfully produced bamboo board should have a strength to weight ratio greater than that of boards made from most woods. More importantly, bamboo trees grow to full maturity in only 2 to 6 years while wood trees, even the fastest growing ones, would take 15 to 30 years. This very favorable growth rate of bamboo trees would present a significant solution to the possible shortage of available lumber caused by both the increasing demand for lumber and the gradual depletion of sizeable wood trees, a shortage which can be alleviated through the successful use of bamboos.
Since bamboo trees and wood trees are not of the same botanical species, the methods of cultivation, harvesting and curing of bamboo trees differ widely from that of wood trees; so are the characters of their fiber, their color, and their grain textures. In addition, the manufacturing methods and physical or chemical treatments of bamboos also differ greatly from that of other woods, therefore all manufactured wood boards such as plywoods, laminate woods, wafer woods, and particle boards should not be used to compare with this invention.